About USC Gould

USC Gould is a top-ranked law school with a 115-year history and reputation for academic excellence. We are located on the beautiful 228-acre USC University Park Campus, just south of downtown Los Angeles.

Careers

We work closely with students, graduates and employers to support successful career goals and outcomes. Our overall placement rate is consistently strong, with 94 percent of our JD class employed within 10 months after graduation.

Dorothy W. Nelson Professor of Law, Emeritus

Michael H. Shapiro specializes in bioethics and in constitutional law, and in particular, medical and legal ethical issues surrounding research and experimentation; reproductive, genetic, and behavior control; and death and dying. He taught Constitutional Law and Bioethics and Law.

A prolific author on medical ethics and legal questions in the advent of new technologies, Shapiro has written Cases, Materials, and Problems on Bioethics and Law, 2nd ed. (with others, Thomson West, 2003), “Human Enhancement Uses of Biotechnology, Policy, Technological Enhancement and Human Equality” in Encyclopedia of Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues in Biotechnology (Wiley, 2000), and “The Identity of Identity: Moral and Legal Aspects of Technological Self-Transformation” (Journal of Social Philosophy and Policy, 2005).

Professor Shapiro earned his BA and MA from the UCLA and earned his JD from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was associate editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He practiced with Swerdlow, Glikbarg & Shimer; was a staff attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance; and was a staff attorney, assistant director of litigation, and acting director of litigation at the Western Center on Law & Poverty. Shapiro lectured at USC Gould School of Law in 1966 and joined the USC Gould faculty again in 1970. He also has taught at Yale Law School and UCLA Law School. Shapiro sat on the Institutional Review Board for Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, reviewed proposals to Study the Human Genome Project for the U.S. Department of Energy, and is a member of the Pacific Council for Health Policy and Ethics.

“Individual Rights, Just Access to Health Care, and Public Health Measures in ‘Normal’ Times and in Times of Crisis: Changes in Basic Principles, or Changes in Their Application, or Both?” In Bioterrorism and Human Rights (Roy Branson, ed.) (Center for Law and Public Policy with the Center for Christian Ethics, Loma Linda University, 2005).

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Orin Kerr was interviewed on the legality of police departments using 3D-replicated biometrics to unlock a phone or personal device. "The government needs to get the biometric unlocking information somehow," he said, adding that "Legally, it’s no different from using fingerprints to unlock a device."